I have a pretty good idea, although I am not sure how to carry it out. I was thinking of a teenager growing up in Pre-War America but then the bombs fell but he was eventually ghoulified, I could use some tips in the way of writing this because I just spent hours trying to come up with a good setting in Pre War America but failed, I tried to give the Protagonist a reason for not being near when the bombs fell, but failed. I am also not very skilled in geographical locations of america. So could I ask for some tips from more of the skilled writers out here? Thanks for reading and +1 internets for you if you reply.

You want to write it with as good of grammar as possible. (See what I did there?)

Pre-War america would be interesting to write about, because besides major gas inflation, the war at anchorage, and the Vaults, stuff that happened right before the War is pretty much speculation.

I would personally choose an area that Fallout has covered. California (Fallout 1+2), D.C (Fallout 3), these are all good locations to base stuff off of, because Fallout has laid out the geography before your feet in that sense.

Thanks, how long does it usually take you to finish the stories the size you put them out?

About twenty or more minutes or so. I have come up with the entire story before-hand, though, so it goes quickly.

Jesus, that's dawm quick bro.

A possible reason he is not annhilated by the bombs? No vaults.

(Well, The Keller Family quest in Fallout 3 could provide you with some basis on how other people survived bombs without vaults. Doing that quest might help, if you own Fallout 3.)

Other people survived in caves, so there's an option for him to survive. It could also be the reason he turned into a Ghoul. The cave protected him from the "fallout" but, the water that trickled into the cave was slightly irradiated and so that was the reason he turned, slowly.

OR he could have been in the subway tunnels at the time, in a bigger city, like DC and survived because he hid in a maintenance tunnel.

It really depends on where you want your character to start out. Is he a city kid, or more a country boy? I think you have an idea about the setting, since its based on the Fallout Universe. YOU need to think about your character, his personality, his goals, his motivations etc, the rest will become clear, once you know who tells your story.

Thanks everyone, I will try to piece a story togeather.

Hmm.. I too have considered writing Fan Fiction, since I came here actually. But now this thread has made me to consider it again. So aside from the usual tips about grammar and stuff, can someone link or tell me the borders of Caesars Legion, Midwestern BoS, and the areas surrounding them. And since I don't know their exact borders, then any factions that are their "neighbours".

Read other people's fan-fics to get an idea of how long each chapter should be, how you can develop characters, how to write dialogue, et cetera. Read my fan-fic (link in my sig) for example. But seriously, read several different fan-fics and get an idea of some different writing techniques, then develop your own style by combining different techniques and molding them to fit your story.

Caesar? He has control of Arizona, and a fraction of New Mexico's land.

During the events of New Vegas he has stretched to the Mojave borders though.

@Bacon, the key is, it's better to make it too long than too short. Several (5-7) large paragraphs are normally the size of my fan-fic chapters.

According to his dialogue, iirc, he has control of all of Arizona and New Mexico, along with much of Colorado (Denver for sure) and parts of the Utah.

As for the Midwestern BoS? Their territory stretches from Chicago all the way to Colorado, I think.

Here, http://www.gamesas.com/user/573446-savagebeatings/ made http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/331/usadetailed.jpg which I find to be quite good.

With the looming threat of nuclear war, there would have been seminars, news broadcasts etc regarding building a nuclear fallout shelter. They are simple in design, there is a You Tube video from the 50's that helped me immensily when I wrote Motorcity Mayhem. Your person could be at a relatives house on vacation? Whom, said relatives, built themselves a shelter even though they lived quite a ways from a large city of any sort. The U.S. also has an AM frequency that would broadcast the radiation levels. I had them go off air in my story, but could be useful for you perhaps, it was called the Connolarad (sp?) Emergency Broadcast system.

Or, if remote enough, IE; The upper pencsula of Michigan, The Ozark Mountains, or many other choices. Those probably would not have been hit directly, gaining their damage from the nuclear fallout. Hyroshima's mushroom cloud rose over a mile high, and these nukes in Fallout would've been bigger, covering an area and penetrating into the atmosphere before raining down with the black rain.

The rain would have contaminated the water system obviously, so even the remote areas would have been effected whether it actually rained there or not. Hope this gives some insight, look forward to reading your story.

Another tip that may help - do one-shots or short ones until you know you can take on a potentially fifty-chapter epic arc. Otherwise it can be quite daunting and you end up either getting discouraged and stopping halfway or rushing through it at the expense of quality.

I second this, I am working on three long, multi chapter fics. But, I enjoy and have more fun writing the shorter stories.

Ihave changed to the life of a more intelligent mutant in vault 87 check it out in my sig

Thanks, that map helped a lot in my planning... Though before I start writing anything I'll read a bunch of other peoples Fan-Fic, but you mentioned writing style, so I was thinking 'I-form' for I find easier to write. Change of mind, all knowing might suit better, viewing everything from kind of an distance.

There should be a list of great fanfics somewhere around here.

I'd recommend Memories by Old Andy and anything by goristhescholar.

I think another good one was called "I am Marie Ashur" something like that.

20 Minutes? Damn I end up spending hours typing away, that more than anything is the only daunting prospect, it's why I'm a week behind on my own fan-fic. Personally I'd suggest the old idiom "write what you know"; I like the Enclave, RPed an Enclave character for years so when I decided to write my fan-fiction I pretty much had most of his backstory nailed down and a lot of the alterations I would make to Fallout 3's plot came from my many arguements with people on these forums about the in-game Enclave - now I think I'm definately plus 80 pages in MS Word or maybe more since I stopped saving them onto my computer when I was at 60 and that was months ago...

Queen of The Pitt one of my favorite fics

I try to think about how the story goes but part of the fun with me is making it up as I go along, i do have a definitive ending though.

I think people misunderstood.

I write my fan-fic in microsoft word. It takes about 2-4 hours to come up with/write a chapter (in my case)

I spend about 20 minutes editing on the Fallout site, and still, I'm almost always coming back to edit the post because I find grammatical mistakes I missed.